Category Archives: NHL Hockey News

The United States topped Canada 4-1 to claim the bronze medal at the world ice hockey championship on Sunday.

Chris Kreider led the U.S. with two goals.

Forward Nick Bonino scored the winner on a rebound during a power play in the final period. Anders Lee and Kreider added empty-net insurance goals to give the U.S. its third bronze in six years.

Kane had an assist in the game to finish the tournament with 20 points for eight goals and 12 assists, the first player to do so since 2008.

Captained by McDavid, the NHL scoring leader, Canada was considered a contender for gold.

Chasing its third title in four years, Canada suffered losses in the preliminary round to the U.S. and Finland and was stunned by Switzerland 3-2 in the semifinals.

The U.S. had a great start to the tournament with six straight wins. It knocked out the Czech Republic in the quarterfinals but was trashed 6-0 by Sweden in the semis.

The opposite could also happen, though, and there is risk with taking a Cousins, Kristaps Porzingis or Gordon Hayward too high, given the severity of their respective injuries. Notice, I haven’t even mentioned Kawhi Leonard or Kyrie Irving yet, two other stars who missed a large chunk of this past season.

Here is a look at those players and some of the other major angles as I examine the top-100 roto rankings. Note, that I’m not including players slated to be selected in the upcoming NBA draft in these ranks.

I have Anthony Davis, James Harden and LeBron James at No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, and there isn’t really a dropoff after them with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Karl-Anthony Towns and Giannis Antetokounmpo in the 4-7 range and Nikola Jokic (No. 8) Victor Oladipo (No. 9) and Stephen Curry (No. 10) rounding out the group.

Redskins left guard Arie Kouandjio suffered an injury that is believed to be a torn quad muscle, per sources with knowledge of the situation. The injury forces him out of action for up to eight months, putting the entire 2018 season in jeopardy.

Kouandjio started the final six games of the 2017 season for Washington, even though he was cut from the team breaking from training camp.

He has a knack for what we call our slash game as far as puncturing and finding a hole, Thomas said. He catches the ball decent out of the backfield, he’s a bigger body and he can sustain some of the contact that’s involved with playing the position. He’s got some intelligence to him, as well. He’ll be able to grasp this offense fine and he has.

Terrifying: Richardson has some marijuana-related arrests and suspensions in his background. He says that is all in his past, but I saw this video in health class one time about how the reefer turns regular kids into psychotic hippie beatniks. NFL coaches still watch that video every offseason.

Bottom Line: Richardson is a solid value at this point in the draft who could grow into an adequate left tackle or a fairly effective right tackle. G

The story is all sorts of glorious. And to many, it’s just the latest strange incident that’s filled the Florida police blotter in recent decades.

According to the Jacksonville Beach Police, Joseph Horton stole Bortles’ truck and was found trespassing inside the Jaguars player’s home, First Coast News report.

A Jaguars spokesperson confirms that no one was injured in this incident.

Given that no one was injured in the incident, there’s no real reason not to joke about it. Just ask the best parody account Twitter has ever seen.

Collision was inevitable. Take, for example, that moment in 2016 when on a team flight, some of the white Yankees couldn’t understand why protests were occurring. “Why don’t they just obey?” CC Sabathia, the star pitcher and elder statesman, recalled a teammate saying uncomprehendingly. Sabathia, who grew up black in the Bay Area in Vallejo, California, told the group gathering about the time he and his friends were in high school driving around when a cop stopped them at gunpoint, put them facedown. They were unsure what they had done, unsure if they would be arrested or shot on the spot.

Doolittle: They will both go down, which for ERA means improvement. At the plate, while Ohtani’s exit velocities are even better so far than Stanton’s, his actual WOBA is out-performing his xWOBA by a larger margin than all but 12 qualifying hitters. The mound improvement is based more on eyeballing him than the numbers. His deserved run average and xWOBA both suggest the ERA is about right. But that stuff is so filthy that when he becomes more consistent with his command, it’s hard to see him staying in the mid-4s.

Looking back now, Mullen sees those whirlwind first few months as a rookie head coach and first-time father clearly. He remembers sitting down in his office for the first time, taking a deep breath and thinking to himself, What do I do now? It sunk in, he said, “Wow, it’s all on me now.”

That concoction of pressure and inexperience wasn’t always helpful, he admits. He wanted to win and win big and win big in a hurry — all at once, right this very minute — and anything or anybody who stood in his way was a problem he had to personally overcome. He’d receive bad news from the administration or even a bad diagnosis from the training staff and tell himself, “Everyone’s against us.”

With the Giants and Jets possibly primed to select quarterbacks next week, The Post examined some of the characteristics of the top 15 current NFL quarterbacks (based on average QBR over past three seasons) displayed coming out of college to see if anything could be gleaned from it and how the top four quarterbacks in this year’s draft compare. Here is what we found:

Analysis: Hand size has become a key measurement for QBs in the draft in recent years. Teams believe big hands means better ball security, particularly in cold weather. A few years ago, Jared Goff’s 9-inch hands drew a lot of questions. Brady’s hand size is unknown. It was not measured at the combine when he was in the draft.

Brees and Wilson are both pointed to as examples of shorter quarterbacks having success. Both have 10 ¼-inch hands.

Analysis: Most of the top QBs are big. It helps them see clearly over the line and down the field. Big QBs are also tougher to take down, as Roethlisberger has shown over the past 14 seasons. However, Russell Wilson and Drew Brees have shown that smaller quarterbacks can succeed.

In this year’s group, Mayfield measures a shade under 6-foot-1, which is one of the biggest concerns team have about him. On the other side, scouts love Allen’s size. He has drawn comparisons to Roethlisberger and Wentz because of his large frame.

The subject of retirement and trade rumors this offseason, the Patriots tight end committed to the 2018 season with New England during a meeting with coach Bill Belichick Tuesday.

Patriots’ TE Rob Gronkowski and his agent Drew Rosenhaus met today with Bill Belichick, and told him that Gronkowski is playing this season for the Patriots.

“It was very positive and Rob is committed,” Rosenhaus said.

Manfred tries to visit as many big league teams as he can each season and, having not been to Toronto last year, was eager to come early this season. The timing of his trip was unrelated to Monday’s deadly attack in Toronto in which 10 people were killed and 14 injured when a driver deliberately struck pedestrians with a van along a busy sidewalk.

“All of us at Major League Baseball were devastated,” Manfred said. “You were in our thoughts all day yesterday and will remain there for some time. I hope that maybe our game tonight will provide a little bit of the beginning of a healing process that will be important for this city.”

A blue banner reading #TORONTOSTRONG was hung from the second deck in center field before Tuesday night’s game, Toronto’s first since the deadly incident. Similar signs were hung on the wall behind home plate, and the team honored the victims and first responders who helped at the scene of the attack before the first pitch.

In addition to Darnold, how many quarterbacks will go in Round 1? Oddsmakers released that prop bet in addition to many others ahead of the NFL Draft later this week, via BetOnline.

AJ Mass: I wrote a bit about Baez and his strong start to 2018 Thursday and how I don’t want to give too much weight to his early-season success. After all, through the first 14 games of 2018, Baez was batting just .191 with a 27.7 strikeout rate. His rise on the Player Rater has really come primarily from what he’s done over the past eight games, hitting .459 with a 16.2 strikeout rate.

True, Baez has shown unusual (for him) power this season, with 7 HR and 24 RBIs on the year, but that may also prove to be streaky as all of the homers and 19 of those RBIs fell in a 10-game stretch from April 10-22. His fly ball rate (36.5 percent) is currently well in line with previous seasons, but the 30.4 HR/FB rate is not sustainable. I expect a .275 season with at most 30 HR and 80 RBIs — and more likely 25 and 70. That’s good for a top-10 finish at his position and perhaps top-75 overall on the ESPN Player Rater, but not much more than that.

Gleyber Torres turned his head and looked up. Each time the wave would make its way around the upper deck and to his left, Torres would take a brief moment to stare from second base, reveling in his first visuals of the major leagues.

He’ll want to remember that. He’ll want to remember his first roll call from the Bleacher Creatures, too, and the thunderous applause he got each time he walked to the plate.

Udoka reflected on the best moment of his coaching career so far: “The [finals] one after Miami came back, obviously that was special based on the previous year and how heartbreaking it was. We were basically on a mission. To do that against Miami was even more sweet.

“What I love about Pop, [on] the first day of training camp we watched the video and he said, ‘This is what happened, we’re not running from it and we’re gonna use it as motivation and fuel throughout the whole year’.

“That was a great thing to do, not hide from it. We owned the loss and saw the things we could have done to obviously win that championship. To carry that motivation throughout the whole year, and use it against the team that beat you, was great.”

The 25-year-old has logged 177 total tackles, 24 passes defensed and two interceptions (one for a touchdown) and two forced fumbles in his three-year career.

By 1996, with Cleveland, Albert Belle had firmly established himself as both an MLB slugger and an insufferable human.

But that didn’t prevent HBO from exercising its habit of throwing money at Spike Lee to produce predictable documentaries. Lee presented Belle as a good guy misrepresented by racist media.

It was an absurd, inflammatory, baseless, wishful take then, and, given Belle’s latest arrest — this week for DUI and indecent exposure — it remains one.

It’ll be interesting to see how Aaron Boone and the YES crew react when Giancarlo Stanton does what he often does: Posing home runs into singles. ESPN’s reel of his plate-posing doesn’t show whether he guessed right, while John Sterling and S uzyn Waldman can ignore it — we can’t see on radio.

With Kansas in the Final Four on Saturday, name the only losing basketball coach in the school’s history. Answer, below.

The 22-year-old Jones was arrested after officers were called to a disturbance in downtown Los Angeles, said police spokesman Luis Garcia. Jones was found “breaking glass doors and windows” and arrested on suspicion of felony vandalism, Garcia said.

The arrest was first reported by TMZ, which posted a video showing a nude Zay Jones pushing his brother, Cayleb, in what appeared to be the hallway of an apartment building.

Cleveland might want to write this off as a “make or miss league” loss. Cleveland shot a hideous 8-of-34 from deep. Hit their average mark, and this is probably a close home loss against a fifth seed that didn’t exactly rain fire either. So … hooray?

What a listless, disengaged effort. The Cavs played as if this were Game 83, starting with LeBron. He drifted off Darren Collison several times in the first quarter; Collison led the league in 3-point percentage. Trevor Booker scooted right around James for an offensive rebound on a free throw. He let Turner sneak behind him for a layup. He sulked. He didn’t get back on defense.

As a receiver, Harris contributed 37 receptions for 409 yards in his three seasons. He had a total of only one catch the past two seasons and played in only five games in 2017 before fracturing his foot in Week 5 against the Chargers. Receiver Brandon Marshall, another player lost in that game — he went down with an ankle injury that needed surgery — is also in danger of becoming a salary-cap casualty. The Giants would save $5.1 million on the cap by jettisoning Marshall. It is more likely that the Giants will ask Marshall to take a pay cut and have him compete for a spot this summer.

Harris’ best work came as a return man, but he regressed badly in his production. He is the third player in Giants history with a kickoff and punt return for a touchdown in the same season — the first to do it in 60 years. He is the first Giants player to score a touchdown on a punt return, on a kickoff return and with a reception in the same season. The signing of receiver and special teamer Cody Latimer made Harris expendable.

Isaiah Pead was a second-round draft pick of the Rams who spent five season in the NFL before a severe car accident required him to have his leg amputated in November of 2016. That ended his football career, but it didn’t end his athletic career.

Pead says he’s now in the early stages of learning to sprint with a prosthetic leg, and he’s hoping to be good enough to win a gold medal in the 2020 Paralympics.

But with just one win in Houston (Sat., 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC) or Miami (Monday), the Thunder should put themselves outside the reach of the long arm of the lottery when factoring in a likely easy win versus Memphis on the final night of the season, which would put OKC at 47 wins. Either Minnesota or Denver, each of which holds the tiebreaker over OKC, will top out at 46 wins given they have a rematch of Thursday’s thriller on Wednesday in Minnesota.

The first overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft, Clowney got off to a slow start but is coming off the best year of his career. He started all 16 games last season and had a career-high 9.5 sacks. Clowney just turned 25 years old and is entering his prime, and he could become one of the highest-paid defensive players in the NFL.

Two first-round picks from 2014, Blake Bortles and Mike Evans, have already signed contract extensions. Clowney is among several members of that draft class who could sign big contracts this offseason. Others include Khalil Mack, Taylor Lewan, Odell Beckham and Aaron Donald.

Assuming Mother Nature cooperates, Saturday will be the first day of the young season that all 30 teams compete. From a fantasy perspective, this avails more pitchers and hitters for streaming, with less of a need because there aren’t any off days to fill. As such, many fantasy managers won’t bother to look for upgrades. However, with the first scoring week coming to a close, the sage skipper will take advantage of the larger pool of available players and upgrade fringe roster spots. Here are some suggestions.

Since their return in 1999, the Cleveland Browns have swung and missed on four quarterbacks taken in the first round.

Head coach Hue Jackson and General Manager John Dorsey have a new confidence that their franchise quarterback will come from the 2018 NFL Draft.

I think everyone around the game understands what a good player he is and what a big-time money player he’s become, Boone said.

Stanton starred in last Thursday’s opening win at Toronto, homering twice. But he struck out three times against Chris Archer and once each when facing Austin Pruitt (1-1) and Sergio Romo. Stanton was booed in the eighth inning after the first five-strikeout game of his 11-season professional career.

I was awful today, he said. You put up a performance like that, you should get some boos.

Gregorius was asked to think back to April 2015, when he hit .206 in his first month with the Yankees and made several errors and baserunning blunders in his first month. Fans taunted him by chanting Jeter’s name.

The reason why they boo you, because they want you to do good. It’s not because they hate you, Gregorius said. It’s a bad day today, but tomorrow if he gets five home runs, everybody’s going to forget about it.

However, if it takes additional first-rounders on top of the pair in 2018, the offer suddenly isn’t all that attractive for the Bills. Even if it means moving all the way up to second overall, no quarterback in this year’s draft class is worth three firsts.

The McCarron signing offers the Bills some semblance of a safety net—a Plan B if they aren’t able to move up.

They shouldn’t be afraid to use it.

The problem is that the Rams have now used their top two picks in this draft on wideouts, given that the first-rounder is going to New England and their second-round pick was shipped off to Buffalo in the Watkins deal. They’ve traded a first-round pick for one year of Cooks at $8.5 million and the right to franchise him in 2019 or pay him a market value deal. (Franchising him would also take the tag off the table for Aaron Donald, increasing Donald’s leverage.) Nobody can question the star power the Rams currently possess, but this is a team with little depth at a number of key positions and major question marks at positions like tight end and edge rusher. Those draft picks could have helped.

The Saints and other interested teams didn’t get to make their pitch for Jordy Nelson by getting him to visit. Nelson quickly reached an agreement with the Raiders, James Jones of the NFL Network reports, with Nelson getting $15 million over two seasons with $13 million guaranteed.

Raiders General Manager Reggie McKenzie has a history with Nelson from his time in Green Bay, and Oakland receivers coach Edgar Bennett served as Nelson’s position coach for seven seasons with the Packers.

So this is why Tyrann Mathieu is so undaunted by this next mountain in front of him. If he didn’t live without a father, if he wasn’t kicked out of school, if his name didn’t bleed across that bottom line on ESPN, if he didn’t lose two of his closest friends, maybe Mathieu wouldn’t know how to handle this current adversity. But he has. This all “defined” him, he says.

Part of Mathieu sounds like it’s searching for an answer to a question posed by a season that got him cut. But part of him sounds like he’s never been healthier and never thought this clearly so it truly doesn’t matter whether he’s playing for Arizona or Houston.

It means that is unavailable for the World Series, should we make it. Zambrano brought little to the Mets, but made immediate impression on the Devil Rays.has been eligible for 32 years now and has been a finalist once, his final year as a modern-era candidate 2004.

Now, with more football than ever available comes more intense draft coverage.

The draft once took place inside hotel ballrooms with a few dozen people. It went from the Waldorf Astoria hotel in 1979 to Madison Square Garden in the mid-’90s and then Radio City Music Hall in the mid-2000s. Recently it’s been hosted in Chicago and Philadelphia. This year, it’s at AT&T Stadium where 100,000 people might watch it in person, and millions more from around the country.

“I’d like to thank Marcus for his contributions to our team the past three seasons,” coach Andy Reid said in a press release. “We felt this was the right move for our team and also for Marcus at this time.”

G.M. Brett Veach added his two cents on the move as well.

“After a thorough evaluation of our roster we decided it was in the best interest for us and for Marcus to move in different directions,” Veach said. “We appreciate Marcus’ contributions to our football team and wish him the best of luck as he continues his ing career.”

The Minnesota Vikings just gave quarterback Kirk Cousins A LOT of money over the next three seasons. Not only does he want to play well to repay them, but he also wants to stick around.

“As Rick said yesterday, this is a lifetime deal. That’s the goal. This is a three-year deal but the expectation from both sides is we raise our kids here and then if everything goes as planned that I’d be here for a long, long time.”

Sensing vulnerability, potential Democratic challengers, including former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have started making state appearances, and the parade of hopefuls is expected to pick up considerably after the November midterm elections.

John Weaver, a Kasich adviser, cautioned against reading too much into the Ohio governor’s scheduled April 3 return to New Hampshire. But Weaver said he thinks Trump will face a GOP challenger in 2020, whether it’s Kasich or someone else. Kasich finished second to Trump in the 2016 Republican primary here.

“No one would have predicted Trump would be president,” Weaver said. “No one should predict whether Trump will be president in three months, in six months or running for reelection. The rapidly changing landscape should be observed and not predicted.”

With that being said, the rise of the runningback position has taken a different course as teams are choosing to implement committees of two or three backs instead of having a bell cow at the position. While many teams are focusing on having a lot of depth at offensive skill positions, are there any clear statistical differences between teams that spread the ball out to several skill players and teams that focus on two or three major players

It took almost no time for the Philadelphia Eagles to take advantage of the Seattle Seahawks’ roster deconstruction, as they agreed to a deal nearly a week before free agency began. Their trade for defensive end Michael Bennett continued the aggressiveness executive vice president of football operations Howie Roseman and head coach Doug Pederson have shown, and that’s a Super Bowl-winning recipe for the franchise. All it took was a 2018 fifth-round pick and wide receiver Marcus Johnson to get Bennett and a 2018 seventh-round pick.